Ode to the Sister Mountain

Not every altar is made by hands.
Some rise from the old violence of the earth,
shouldering snow, cloud, silence,
and the blue astonishment of morning.

You stand there, white-crowned and unseduced,
not asking to be understood,
not bending toward the small weather of men,
not lowering your face
to explain your height.

Below you, the shrubs keep their low green vows.
The stones gather like witnesses.
A cairn leans into the wind,
rough prayer stacked upon rough prayer,
as though someone once stopped here,
out of breath,
and knew there was nothing left to say
except thank you.

The cloud does not cover you.
It attends you.
It moves across your shoulder,
loosens, drifts,
and goes on empty-handed.

And the valley—
brown, gold, red with hidden flame—
does not resent your brilliance.
It carries it.
It lets the eye climb slowly,
from thorn and lichen,
to stone and shadow,
to ice,
to the blade of the summit
where light forgets its manners
and becomes pure.

O mountain,
old syllable of the earth,
cathedral without doctrine,
answer without argument—

you do not bless.
You remain.

The trail turns homeward.
The last blue withdraws
from the high ridges.
Even the cairn grows dark,
stone by stone,
its little prayer returned
to weather.

Still, something descends with us.

Not conquest.
Not wisdom.
Not memory polished smooth.

Only a quiet weight in the chest,
a stone the body carries
without being burdened,

and the sense, hours later,
below the snowline,
that silence has entered
without asking permission.

For there are mountains we climb,
and mountains that climb us.

You are the second kind.